1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable stripping unit, and more particularly, to a portable stripping unit for stripping an intermediate portion of a covered electric wire in a process for manufacturing a wire harness, and a sub-assembly or "wire assembly" which forms a wire harness.
2. Description of Relevant Materials
Generally, as part of a process for manufacturing a wire assembly, a stripping process is carried out to fashion an electric junction between electric wires.
This "intermediate" stripping process is carried out by cutting deeply into an obstructing portion of the covered electric wire, separating the cut portion, and exposing the core line. One facility known to the present inventors involves steps of fixing several covered electric wires and stripping the wires by gathering the wires to carry out the intermediate stripping process.
However, using the known facility, the covered electric wires are fixed and stripped by a comparatively large mechanism. Accordingly, covered electric wires already wired on a design board cannot be directly processed. Since the known facility can only be used to perform the intermediate stripping process on covered electric wires before the wires are wired as a web assembly, the known facility cannot process wires already part of a web assembly, nor is it portable. The known facility is therefore inefficient and heavily constrained when a variety of types and/or small quantities of wires are to be processed in modern small lot manufacturing.